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Open for Collaboration: Open Access Week 2015

The 9th International Open Access Week (OAW) will take place from Monday 19 to Friday 25 October, 2015. This year’s theme is ‘open for collaboration’, which highlights the ways in which collaboration both inspires and advances the open access movement. For example, exploring the partnerships behind launching initiatives such as the Public Library of Science, a non-profit publisher and advocate of open access research, and Impact Story - which allows researchers to discover and share how their research is read, cited, tweeted, and bookmarked. Another focus is how communities establish working relationships with policymakers to deliver open access policies around the world. The theme also emphasises the ways in which open access enables new avenues for collaboration between scholars by making research available to any potential collaborator, anywhere, and at any time.

During OAW, hundreds of workshops, presentations, discussions, conferences, and seminars will be held all around the world to discuss knowledge creation and access. CTA is supporting the initiative by promoting several activities throughout the week.

Check out how we will be involved in the week ahead:

Monday: 19 October 2015

CTA will launch open metadata access to its archive on CGSpace together with the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Open metadata access will allow developers to include our archive in their own collections and feature related articles. CGSpace is a repository of agricultural research outputs and results produced by different CGIAR institutes and partners, including CTA, which indexes reports, articles, press releases, presentations, videos, policy briefs and more. Users have access to various communities of their choice and are able to search across the site, as well as sign up for email alerts and newsfeeds on topics or groups of interest.

Tuesday: 20 October 2015

Join us in helping to update or translate 'open access' articles on Wikipedia as part of a global, virtual edit-a-thon. The edit-a-thon will aim to accomplish three goals during the week: to improve already existing open access-related pages, to create new content where it needs to be added, and to translate open access-related pages into languages where they don't yet exist. You don't need to be an expert Wikipedia editor to contribute; all that is required is an interest in open access and a willingness to share your knowledge. Training for new editors will be provided as part of the event.

Wednesday: 21 October 2015

During OAW, CTA's total open access items online are predicted to reach over 70,000, including around 4,400 PDF documents from our publication catalogue and 9,658 Spore magazine articles. CTA's publication catalogue includes between 550 and 600 titles published and co-published by CTA in electronic and multi-media formats in English, French and, also to a limited extent, in Portuguese, Spanish and Swahili; around 60% of our publications are free to download. Spore magazine articles on agriculture and rural development for ACP countries are published bi-monthly. Over 8,500 downloads for articles and publications from the catalogue and Spore archive were recorded during September 2015.

Thursday: 22 October 2015

CTA and its partners will launch the Market-led, User-owned ICT4Ag Enabled Information Service (MUIIS) project, which will use open data to produce farming advice for hundreds of thousands of farmers in Uganda. The MUIIS project, which runs until 2018, will use data generated by satellite to improve production and marketing prospects for producers involved in three value chains – maize, soya beans and sesame. Offering low-cost, bundled satellite-based information services delivered by mobile phone, the scheme is expected to benefit more than 350,000 Ugandan smallholder farmers. Of these, at least 35% will be women. Our partners in the project include the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, aWhere Inc., the East African Farmers' Federation, EARS Earth Environment Monitoring, the eLEAF Competence Center, and Mercy Corps, Uganda.

Friday: 23 October 2015

Check out what is happening in open data for agriculture at GODAN, which supports global efforts to make relevant agriculture and nutrition data available, accessible, and usable for unrestricted use worldwide. GODAN has over 100 partners from national governments, NGOs, and international and private sector organisations. Together it focuses on high-level policy and building public and private institutional support for open data; bringing together all stakeholders to solve long-standing global problems. CTA provides financial support for GODAN activities and its secretariat, based at CABI in the UK.

CTA is a joint international institution of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States and the European Union (EU). CTA operates under the framework of the Cotonou Agreement and is funded by the EU.